


Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

by toucanpie



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 12:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toucanpie/pseuds/toucanpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Esca and Marcus post-film, training youngsters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xahra99](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xahra99/gifts).



Sunlight dapples over the edge of Marcus' foot, warming the mud caught on his sandals. The tree he's sat against rustles in a soft breeze and just ahead the water ripples near the river bend.

Esca's head rises silently above the water. He moves intently forward through the reeds and then dips under again, the river swallowing him with the faintest of sounds.

Marcus stops watching to tip his head back against the tree. When he closes his eyes patterns dance on the inside of his lids in the shape of tens of tiny suns.

-

He has become used to seeing market stalls when he dreams. Fluttering canvases and Esca, tall and dirty, with lambs slung over his shoulders. Dusty tracks stretching forwards to hills, women washing clothes in old buckets and men sweating and shifting beneath heavy plumes. Sometimes he tastes the dates of the Empire in fruit the shape of the Britons' berries. Sometimes he walks with a dry mouth and thinks he is back on the ship that carried him across the ocean. Then a soft wind comes across the deck, whispering of marsh and pine, and he wakes.

-

Esca stands above him, blocking the sun's warmth and dripping without apology on his clothes. The water glides off his arms, streaking down his hands and off his fingers to splatter the grass.

"Where's my fish?" Marcus asks, shielding his eyes and looking up.

Esca could be Grecian in the sun, grinning down with his cheeks turned brown and his nose a tender red. He pulls his shirt from the tree, lays it on the ground and then falls upon it, bearing Marcus little heed.

"In the water, with the others."

"And why didn't you catch it?"

The spear, Marcus realises, is nowhere in sight, perhaps lost on the bottom of the river or snapped in half like the last one.

"Well, we talked but he didn't think much of you as a prospect."

He smiles.

“It's a delicate skill," Esca says, turning his head but not opening his eyes. "You'll take rabbit or deer just as well, I think."

Marcus rises, leaving Esca where he lies, and walks over to the riverbank. The waters are still and shimmering in the sun, inviting though not as warm as they look. He kneels and plucks a reed from a clump, looking for river hens or the voles that sometimes shoot from one hole to another. He doesn't have Esca's eye for movement but he is slowly learning the way of the land. 

"Fowl might please," he calls to Esca, but Esca makes no reply.

Before Caledonia, he might've looked round to check he wasn't suddenly alone, but now he is used to Esca's silences and finds them comforting.

He's watching a hawk circle in the distance when he feels a hand clasp his shoulder.

"They're up river, we won't get back in time," Esca says, staring at the sun. “Come.”

-

Their camp is east half a mile, on the edge of a large wood. They come up on it slow, creeping from tree to tree in case they've been discovered. But their little hollow is undisturbed, and when Esca clambers up the big birch, everything is stowed where they left it.

He lowers their packs to the ground while Marcus kicks leaves over where they slept. They're travelling light so the heaviest thing in their bundles is their water.

Esca stays in the branches, shifting footholds as he looks around.

"North," he says, hopping down.

"Sure of it?" Marcus asks. He had marked a western trail yesterday he thought was more likely. 

"Yes."

Esca thumps him on the chest with a rolled cloak and a grin and they are off.

-

Esca runs light, with long loping strides, and Marcus tramps, steady and slow, like all the best of his kind. The woodland stretches out around in them in all directions and sometimes the number of trees they pass almost dazes him. The time moves fast to start, as they rush through the damp grass, then slow as his body starts to catch up to his demands and begins to ache.

They pause for water a few times mid-morning and once sunlight catches on the dew in half-sunk footprints. Esca runs his fingers against the moss on trees and then pushes branches away from his face as he looks around with serious eyes.

Marcus might not be able to track a group through a forest but he can read Esca and his silences -- they're close.

Another mile or two and he'll be beckoned to spy on their quarry. Then they'll close and engage and his thigh can have its rest.

-

They catch their prey next to a stream, talking amongst themselves as they move to cross it. The sun has shifted to high in the sky and they burst out of the trees with it behind them as they loose loud cries.  
Marcus soon has one pinned against an oak, still struggling for a dagger. Behind him Esca harries two with a short staff and rapid steps.

The blood pounds in Marcus' ears in a way it hasn't done since he first landed on British shores. His exhaustion forgets itself in the rush of combat. Even as he's pulled away by another two and his hands are rapped by a shield he cannot feel the pain he should.

He takes away from it what he always does -- the strange way his opponent's face stays in his head. The features too close to his, fierce and grotesque. The thick jolt of fear when a weapon swings close and the noises metal makes on metal as sword screeches against shield.

-

"The Empire doesn't fight like that," Sabinus says after the playfighting is done, winding cloth round a slice on his arm.

Sabinus is the oldest of their charges. He's quick with his mind but not compelling enough to be mistaken for a future centurion yet.

"Maybe they should," Esca says, sharpening the blade on Marcus' sword with a stone. “Have you thought that?”

Esca, Marcus thinks, enjoys the hunting and pouncing portion of their exercises more than most would. As a result the young men now sitting around them give him space that they would not give the Britons they have grown up around.

"Does it matter how a force fights if they have you cornered and off-guard?" Marcus asks. "Does it matter when they can track you so easily and come up on you quietly?"

When he looks round the clearing they are all staring at him with their unschooled eyes, still waiting for him to give them all the answers.

"No," he finishes for them. "Because even a poorly trained force can kill you if they catch you unawares."

-

Later that evening Marcus skins them two hares while Esca banks a large fire and they all gather round, shivering from a late sudden shower.

He draws them diagrams of formations and phalanxes in the dirt and recreates the battles he was taught about during his training as the dark comes in.

They are young, younger still when they yawn yet strain to catch his every word. Sometimes he wishes he was still of an age to be sat amongst them and then sometimes he is glad he is no longer as blind as they are. In a few years they will all look to join the cohorts of Rome and perhaps in a few years after that they will come home limping or dead.

The gods will pick what paths they tread, he reminds himself. But that doesn't stop him from wanting to make sure that they are strong enough to deserve fair fates.

-

On the fifth day of their travelling, they are woken, trussed and bound, then dragged down to the river, laughing and struggling.

He dunks two or three in retaliation once he is free, mourning the muddying of his cleanest tunic. Then he helps Esca chase the lot of them up into the trees where they throw sticks and insults at each other until they run out of projectiles and the boys run out of words.

-

Back home is an old farm and animals and letters from his uncle. Fields that need sowing, trees to harvest, sheep to be bought and horses to be sold. A roof to fix and a stable to rebuild. 

It's all safe in the hands of a good family and he doesn't miss his routines much except when it is cold.

He never saw himself as one of the wild men of the forest but sometimes he sees the wood and feels the wind and forgets that he ever saw the learned stones of Rome.

-

On the seventh day their running disturbs a corpse. One of their number lying dead on the forest floor, his bracers shiny in a pool of blood.

Marcus misses a step and almost falls, the leaves seeming to surround him as he stumbles. Staring eyes await him when he regains his footing and then a howl from the east and the sound of swords.

Esca slides from the trees as he makes for the source of the noise and they come over the hill at the same time. He can barely make foe from friend, so similarly are they all dressed and so hot with rage is his mind.

He hits the first stranger he finds like a siege ram and then spits him as he tries to struggle up off the ground. Someone rushes him from the side and he swings his arm round just fast enough to deflect a blade in time. From there he loses himself in keeping up with the weapons that engage him, the attacks that get faster and stronger as his arms start to tire.

He doesn't start to think of stopping until suddenly Esca steps next to him and slides his sword home into the last aggressor. His head sags with sudden exhaustion and his hands slip wet and bloody across his face as gropes for Esca and presses their foreheads together.

Esca breathes harsh and heavy against his neck and Marcus throbs both with pain and with an anger that might burn him.

Finally Esca's grip on him drops and they stand panting, looking around.

Sabinus is behind them, his neck bleeding and his arms cut, his clothes thick from a fall in the mud and an angry steam rising from his sweating chest.

The rest of the group is around them, like wolves ringing a kill, and as he struggles to breathe around the thick fury in his throat , he knows with regret that they have birthed what they were sent out to.

-

They make their home town in the early hours, carrying their companion between them and still streaked with blood where it would not wash off.

The way the townsfolk stare at them is the way he once stared at the first legion he saw return from battle, with sudden realisation of a horror he had not previously known.

He makes the meeting with the mother and the father, because that at least, he has been trained for, and then he sees the others to their homes, clasps their sad shoulders with his hand and sees in the faces of the veteran fathers the things he knows are on his own.

When at last it is just he and Esca they start the longer walk to their farm on the edge of the town. The dust rises under their feet like it always does in his dreams and he wonders how the gods balance the scales, who they choose to promote when they knock another man down, what worth there was to be found in trying to struggle against the tide of a storm.

-

Esca washes the dirt and the blood from his face and arms and Marcus washes the same from him. Their foreheads are cool and wet when they press them together again.

"Loss doesn't come without value," Esca says, his fingers dry on Marcus' face. "To lose who we love is to have been able to love them."

"So there is no reason to ever stop with love," Marcus says. If it is a question it does not sound like one. They have both lost in their time and he thinks he has come to know how it is.

Esca doesn't speak but smiles instead, slow and weary, and somehow still able to lift Marcus' heart.


End file.
